🐣 The first week at home
Seven days of settling a new bird in. It is about a calm room and a healthy bird, not about taming — that starts after this.
General guidance for settling a bird in, not veterinary advice. Anything about your bird’s health belongs with an avian vet. Why this matters more than it sounds.
At any point, on any day. Birds hide illness until they cannot, so these matter more in a bird you do not know yet.
- Sitting fluffed up and quiet for most of a day, especially low in the cage or on the floor.
- Not eating, or eating but producing far fewer droppings than yesterday.
- The tail pumping with every breath, open-beak breathing, or any clicking or wheezing sound.
- Wetness or crusting around the nostrils or the eyes.
- Droppings that turn watery, black, or bright green and stay that way.
- Any bleeding, any fall the bird does not get up from, or a bird you cannot rouse.
Sources
- Do not grab, towel or corner the bird to move it. Nothing this week is worth the setback.
- Do not let it out into a room that is not bird-proofed — windows, mirrors, other pets, open water, a hot hob.
- Do not change the diet yet, however poor the old one is. One change at a time, and this week is already the change.
- Do not invite people over to see it. An audience is not a welcome to a bird.
- Do not spray or bath it. Offer a shallow dish and let it decide.
🚪 Day 1 · Arrive and leave alone
Almost everything you want to do today is better done next week. The bird has just lost every landmark it had; the job is a quiet room and no demands.
- Put the cage where you decided it would live, against a wall rather than in the middle of a room, and do not move it again this week.
- Offer exactly the food and water it was eating before it came to you. Ask the breeder or shop and match it; this is not the week to improve a diet.
- No handling, no reaching in, no visitors brought round to look. Let it sit and watch you from behind the bars.
🍽️ Day 2 · Prove it is eating
A frightened bird can sit beside a full bowl for a day without touching it, and a small bird has very little in reserve. Droppings are the proof, not the bowl.
- Check for fresh droppings on the paper each morning. A bird that is eating leaves them steadily through the day.
- Put food in more than one place, including low down. A bird that will not cross the cage yet may still eat what is next to it.
- If you can weigh it without a chase, do. Every later weight alert in this app is measured against the baseline you set now.
🩺 Day 3 · Book the check-up, keep other birds apart
Birds hide illness well enough that a new one can look perfect and not be. The first vet visit is a baseline for a healthy bird, not a reaction to a sick one.
- Book a new-bird examination with an avian vet, and add that vet to the app so the number is on the emergency screen before you need it.
- If you already keep birds, keep the new one in a separate room with separate air, and ask your vet how long to keep them apart — the interval is their call, not a number to guess at.
- Look after the birds you already had first each day, and wash your hands before and after the new one.
🌙 Day 4 · Sleep, light and where the cage is not
Most of what makes a new bird settle is dull and structural: a long dark night, a predictable day, and a room that is not quietly dangerous.
- Aim for ten to twelve hours of dark and quiet at night, at roughly the same times each day.
- Not the kitchen. Overheated non-stick coatings kill birds quickly and with no warning; the Hazards directory in this app lists what else is in an ordinary room.
- Out of a draught and out of direct sun, with one side of the cage against something solid so the bird can put its back to it.
👀 Day 5 · Learn what calm looks like on this bird
You cannot notice a change you never learned the baseline of. Spend today watching rather than doing, and learn this particular bird rather than birds in general.
- Relaxed usually looks like this: weight on one foot, feathers loose but not puffed, beak grinding, a stretch, a shake that ends in a settle.
- Worth noticing: feathers clamped flat, eyes wide, leaning away from you, or freezing whenever you move.
- A green-cheek is a loud bird by design. Contact calls when you leave the room are normal and not distress.
🗓️ Day 6 · Start the routine you can actually keep
Predictability is what turns a strange room into a territory. The routine matters more for being the same every day than for being elaborate.
- Fresh water and food at roughly the same hour, in the same order, by the same door.
- Start the daily care checklist in this app today, and weigh once or twice a week rather than daily.
- Talk to the bird from across the room while you do it. Being predictable and boring is the whole technique this week.
🤝 Day 7 · Decide whether it is settled, then begin
A settled bird eats in front of you, moves around the cage while you are in the room, and calls when you leave. If that is where you are, taming starts now — and it has its own protocol in this app.
- If the bird is still frozen whenever you are in the room, give it another few days of exactly this week. Nothing is lost by repeating it.
- When it is settled, open the Trust and step-up module and work it at its own pace. It starts by asking nothing of the bird at all.
- Keep the check-up appointment even if the bird looks perfect. Looking perfect is what birds do.
Why the week is mostly waiting
The days above are what to do. The article behind them is why doing less works, what the number on your own scale is for, and which accidents actually happen.
The rest of the reference
The same week, with the days ticked off
The LunarKiri app walks these seven days one at a time, keeps your place, and starts weight tracking on day one — which is the step this page cannot do for you.